Joanenglish

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Hello Joanenglish, welcome to Wikipedia!

I noticed nobody had said hi yet... Hi!

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If you have any questions, feel free to ask me on my talk page. Thanks and happy editing!-- Alf ^melmac 23:17, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

18th c. in espanol!

Wow. I'm staggered at the translations you're doing of "my" 18th c. British literature and history articles. If there is a particular corner of the field that you think needs better treatment in English or Spanish, let me know. Consider me extremely flattered and appreciative. Geogre 19:42, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Those churches, high, low, and broad

Fielding is fantastic, of course, and one of the three great geniuses of the age (Swift & Pope being the others). He excels all other novelists, even Sterne, for Sterne had one trick in his bag, while Fielding is as great as a playwright as he is as a novelist. (Read Pasquin some time -- it's wonderful.)

Essentially, the English Church came along before the Reformation, and so the question of how much of the Roman church to reject was always up in the air. Before Luther and Calvin, they were mildly reformed, but their liturgy and polity (rule) were very much like the former Roman church. Once the genuine Protestants started up, there was pressure on the English Church to follow them into greater difference from the old forms and old government. Because it lacked a formal doctrinal definition, the church could be pushed one way or the other. Those wanting to stick as closely as possible to the old Roman Catholic forms, both in doctrine and liturgy and polity, were the high church. Those wanting to make the church Puritan (i.e. Calvinist) were the low church. The "broad church" or latitudinarian position held that the church should not be doctrinaire about doctrine. The closest thing the English church ever got to a massive formulation of doctrine and theology was Richard Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.

The matter was never settled, and it really isn't settled yet. Because all sides had a prospect of winning, they kept fighting -- viciously. The low churchmen would get rid of bishops, would get rid of infant baptism, would introduce predestination, etc. What became the Baptists also were lumped in there, although they were called the "Independents" (as in, "independent congregations without doctrine"). The crown is important here, because the head of the state was the head of the church: that's the only hard and fast fact about the English church in the period. This is a big factor in politics, then, because whenever the question of succession comes up, everyone is in a panic to be sure that the next king is high, low, or Catholic. When James II came to the throne, everyone knew he was a Catholic. Well, if he's a Catholic, then the Church of England ceases to exist, because its head will be answering to the Pope. So, we get Mary and William, and William is Dutch, which means that he's low church. Then we get Anne, and she's high church -- sort of. Then we get the Hannoverians, and they're low church and unconcerned. The Hannoverians want power and peace, and they don't like the ecclesiastical lords in the House of Lords.

They got rid of the Convocation, which was the meeting of bishops where doctrine was decided. Once that happened, a weakly governed church became virtually ungoverned. That's why the 18th century is a period where very high churches and very low churches are next to each other and when a new form of "broad church" develops. It's when we start to get the idea of ecumenicalism.

Before George II, though, a person's religion and politics were identical. If you were a Puritan, you were an anti-Jacobite. If you were a Catholic, you were assumed to be a Jacobite automatically. If you were a Jacobite, you were a Tory, and if you were a dissenter (Puritan, Baptist, one of the many other fringe churches), you were a Whig. These are all tied up together in a unified stance, because the Roman Catholic view was also the aristocracy and "God appoints the rulers" view, while the Puritan view was also the "priesthood of all believers and each worker as good as the next" ("When Adam sowed and Eve spun/ Who then was the gentleman?"), so it was all one. Additionally, if you were a "priesthood of all believers" and "no inherent distinction" sort of person, you were almost surely going to be involved in trade and stocks and mercantile exchange, and if you were of the "the Lord makes the lords" view, you were much more likely to be in agriculture and land. Thus, class, religion, and politics were tied together in a way that we now find mysterious.

Sorry if this is a thing you already knew. If it isn't, I hope it helps in the translation. Geogre 02:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Have you considered writing an article on this, Geogre? -- ALoan (Talk) 10:32, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

One of the ironies of Wikipedia is that the people who know a subject very well edit around it. For example, Swift used to be my specialty, and therefore I didn't edit the Jonathan Swift article. I know how much would be necessary, and I won't put a toe in the water unless I'm willing to get immersed. Therefore, I began writing Pope articles, but not the Alexander Pope article (too much to say, too much care needed). The naive articles were bad, but they were obviously bad, whereas an incompletely good article might be confusing. Similarly, the history of the English Church in the 18th century is a thousand pages of controversy and complication and minutia, and so I dare not approach it. Oh, I can give an overview, but to do it properly would be fearful. I will allow a naive article (and I don't think we have one) to steal my thunder rather than be the guy who did a shoddy job. Also, I might violate the WP:NOR rule. I'm sure I'm not the first person to integrate these things in this way with a general history, but I haven't encountered any. It's too obvious to be mine, but I don't want to take the chance. Geogre 12:53, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

JAK

You need to talk to someone else, probably User talk:Cornellrockey. Rich Farmbrough, 09:29 10 March 2007 (GMT).

Romance authors

Since they are unreferenced, they aren't proving notability, hence my putting a cleanup tag on them. I'll leave it to you to add the references. Cornell Rockey 15:54, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

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